For women, the advice about building wealth starts early in a career and comes from a variety of supporters along the way. These voices typically offer the same limiting approach: Save more, spend less, or both!
Thanks to changes in banking regulations as well as cultural attitudes about women’s participation in business entrepreneurship, it is now possible to think bigger and consider larger leveraged investments with greater potential for our balance sheets.
If you’ve been wondering about diversifying your assets as well as leveraging your time and money, hotels are an asset class to consider. Women in lodging have a natural connection to this opportunity because their experience carries them a long way on the industry learning curve. Skills in operations, marketing, franchising, accounting and legal, multi-unit management and people management are directly transferrable to ownership.
If you’re in the industry, you know that hotels make money in two ways: income from operations and asset appreciation over time. You’ve probably helped others realize these gains and build wealth as owners and wondered about the opportunity for yourself. It is certainly a great opportunity, but there are two immediate hurdles to overcome as you start on a path to ownership.
Opportunity Exists
The first hurdle is learning that the opportunity exists and what it might offer to your world. If you are reading this, you are well on the way to clearing the first hurdle.
"Time is money" is a well-known adage. At some point in our careers, we realize that working longer hours will not result in more money because there are just not that enough hours in a day. We need to leverage the work of others to help us build wealth. For hotel owners, general managers free time from everyday operational tasks while owners continue to earn from the investment.
Although hotel ownership gives women the advantages of controlling their investments and their time, few of us own hotels. Broadly, many women haven’t owned large assets, such as hotels, that use significant debt. In part, this is because, until 1988, banks could require women to have a male relative co-sign in order to borrow money. That’s only one generation ago and, culturally, women using debt and acquiring larger assets is relatively new.
Also, women-owned businesses average only 1.4 employees — meaning most of our businesses demand an inordinate amount of our own time. Perhaps we fear employees as life-long commitments when we should be bringing on mutually beneficial team members. In 2021, women are rapidly overcoming both of these cultural limits.
Taking advantage of the hotel opportunity requires drive, some financial assets (such as a house, rental property, savings, 401K, etc.) and a core skill on which to bolt additional knowledge. Your core skill might be experience in the hotel business, but it might also be experience in real estate, banking, managing people, marketing or a related field. Then, with the right information and community, you have the opportunity to not just stay in hotels but to own them.
What Do I Need To Know?
The second hurdle is finding information and mentors to guide you along the ownership path. Fortuna’s Table, a non-profit joint venture of Castell Project, Inc. and She Has a Deal, is built for that purpose.
At Fortuna’s Table, there are articles about each step to ownership, spreadsheet templates, webinars and other curated information. With organized information, you can explore the opportunity.
We crowd-source mentorship using “Tables” to connect prospective owners to guides and experts, allowing you to make connections with the right people at the right time. Tables are Zoom meetings where four to eight people learn from an expert and get their questions answered.
- Intro Tables are open to the public and are a place to engage in conversation with a hotel owner, learning about their investment experiences and getting an overview of what to expect along the path to ownership.
- Expert Tables are hosted by specialists who share information and answer specific questions for Fortuna’s Table subscribers. The complete ecosystem of specialists who support hotel owners host tables, including lenders, appraisers, contractors, franchisors, designers, management companies, attorneys and the others needed to carry a project forward. Becoming a hotel owner is not something you do in a vacuum; these are substantial projects that leverage your core skills with a roster of experts. Tables are the link to expertise and understanding how to work with each specialty.
- Guide Tables place you with an experienced hotel owner and peer mentors to keep you engaged and your project moving forward.
Fortuna’s Table is a new way to develop the knowledge and connections you need to succeed as a hotel owner or investor. It is a community of knowledgeable hotel industry specialists and prospective owners all moving women toward hotel ownership. We invite you to join the conversation and discover if hotel ownership is the right path to a bigger balance sheet for your future.
Peggy Berg chairs the Castell Project, a non-profit advancing women in leadership in the hospitality industry.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.